Single or pluralistic? The game and balance of China’s community governance policy tools

Background Policy tools embody policy concepts and are essential to achieving policy objectives. The effective allocation of policy tools directly impacts the effectiveness of community governance and determines the modernization process of grassroots governance. We aim to analyze the logic of community governance policy tool selection, and then provide assistance for the modernization of grassroots governance. Methods We selected 100 national and provincial government work reports and 63 policy documents related to community governance during China’s “12th Five-Year Plan” to “14th Five-Year Plan” period as analysis samples. And build an analysis framework based on the three dimensions of time, space, and tools. We used Nvivo.20 software for text encoding analysis. Results Based on the model framework, we analyze the results as follows. From the perspective of the time dimension, among the five types of policy tools, the proportion of command-type policy tools used showed a downward trend, from 88.16% in the 12th Five-Year Plan to 83.50% in the 14th Five-Year Plan. However, motivation-type and persuasion-type tools showed an upward trend, rising from 1.34% and 5.26% in the 12th Five-Year Plan period to 3.40% and 8.74% in the 14th Five-Year Plan respectively. The system-change-type policy tools decreased from 1.32% in the 12th Five-Year Plan to 0.97% in the 14th Five-Year Plan. The proportion of capacity-building-type policy tools has gradually increased from 2.63% in the 12th Five-Year Plan to 4.85% in the 14th Five-Year Plan. From the perspective of spatial dimension, apart from command and persuasion policy tools, the usage frequency of the other three types of policy tools in the three major regions all display a “growth-decline-growth” trend. From the perspective of tool dimension, command-type policy tools are dominant in China’s community governance, with a cumulative frequency of 1405 times and a high proportion of 81.75%. Apart from command policy tools, persuasive policy tools and capacity-building policy tools have a relatively high proportion, with usage frequencies of 186 and 78 respectively. Conclusions We found that current community governance policy tools mainly consist of command tools. However, there is a trend towards combining tools such as command, persuasion, incentive, capacity building, and system change in the future. There is a typical contradiction between instrumental rationality and value rationality, indicating an evolution from instrumental rationality to the integration of instrumental and value rationality. This study addresses the conflict of policy tools through rational guidance of values, the rational guarantee of tools, and cooperation to achieve the goal of high-quality development of community governance.


[Comment 3]
The manuscript still has some occasional grammatical errors, especially the articles "the", "a" and "an" are missing in many places, besides these minor problems, please check the spelling.Also, some sentences are too long to be read easily.It is recommended to change to a shorter sentence that is easier to read.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We re-examined the grammar of the entire text, especially the articles "the", "a", and "an", and corrected a total of 32 grammatical errors.In addition, we have rewritten overly long sentences to make them simpler and easier to read.Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript.
[Comment 4] Results and discussion section.The two sections are also well structured and organized.However, it is best to discuss further how your findings differ from past work.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We have revised the discussion section to better correspond to the previous policy text encoding.In addition, we have added some notes to the conclusion section to explore how the current findings differ from previous ones.The first is to shift the analysis of policy texts from qualitative to quantitative analysis to make them more persuasive.The second is to expand the field of analysis of policy tools, which in the past focused more on the tools themselves, while research introduced tools into community governance.Finally, the construction of the three-dimensional model is not only analyzed from the policy tool itself but also combined with the time dimension and spatial dimension to make the research more explanatory (Pg10, Ln605-621).

Response to Reviewer 2 [Comment 1]
There are still grammar and spelling errors in the English version of this article.
Please revise it carefully.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We re-examined the grammar of the entire text, especially the articles "the", "a", and "an", and corrected a total of 32 grammatical errors.In addition, we have rewritten overly long sentences to make them simpler and easier to read.Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript.
[Comment 2] Reference materials, citing literature from scholars outside of China, need to be added, especially those from authoritative authors who are systematic and groundbreaking in policy tools.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We rewrote the literature review and added references.The focus is on completing the previous lack of foreign scholars, especially pioneering scholars, including Hughes OE., Salamon LM., Kirschen ES., Dahl RA., Hood C., Howlett M., Schneider AL., etc. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript (Pg3, Ln84-114).
[Comment 3] Figure 1 is not clear enough and needs to be remade.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We redrew the picture to ensure its clarity of the picture (Pg5, Ln182).

Response to Reviewer 3 [Comment 1]
The literature review is incomplete, especially the literature review for the classification of policy tools policy tools.The article only includes competent, learning, persuasive, command, induce, capacity building, systemic transformation, voluntary, mixed, and coercive.There are other categories that have not been mentioned and it needs to be supplemented.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We rewrote the literature review and added references.The focus is on completing the previous lack of foreign scholars, especially pioneering scholars, including Hughes OE., Salamon LM., Kirschen ES., Dahl RA., Hood C., Howlett M., Schneider AL., etc. Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript (Pg3, Ln84-114).
[Comment 2] The study selected 163 policy texts including national government work reports, civil affairs development plans, representative provincial government work reports and other policy documents related to community governance.However, the process of screening 163 policies has not been presented.The policy collection process needs to be demonstrated.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We've added a new selection process for policy texts, which are as follows.Judging from the results of data published on the websites of relevant departments at all levels, the concept of community governance first appeared in policy documents after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee.Although there were previously relevant contents of community management, they were scattered in various documents and did not form a system.Due to the lack of policy texts related to community governance, the documents issued by different levels of departments have different characteristics.Therefore, the following principles were adopted when selecting sample files.First, the sample period is from 2013 to 2022; Second, the sample mainly comes from policy documents at or above the provincial level, including five-year planning documents, special planning documents, government work reports, etc.; Third, because some provinces have not issued special policies for community governance, the provincial sample range is three provinces in each of the three major regions of the eastern, central and western regions delimited by the state, and the government work report of the sample province is the main line.The papers number these texts according to the principle of "region-period-order" to form a library of policy texts required for research (Pg4, Ln134-151).
[Comment 3] The text encoding is too simple, please supplement the process of text encoding completely.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We've added a new description of the coding process.In this paper, a total of 163 samples of policy texts such as national and provincial five-year plans, special plans, and government work reports were selected as the text library.Therefore, the study uses Nvivo.20 text encoding software to encode the files of the policy text library, so that the qualitative policy text can be converted into quantitative node data.In the coding process, according to the classification of policy tools in the analysis model, the coding structure of "tree node-subnode-reference point" and "reference point-subnode-tree node" is adopted.When encountering policy texts that are difficult to classify, the research adopts the semantic analysis method, combined with the context content of the text to make comprehensive judgments.Specifically, according to the theory related to the theme, the coding nodes are identified, and according to the actual situation of the theory and policy text, the policy tools are divided into five categories: command-type, motivation-type, persuasion-type, system-change-type, and capacity-building-type.Secondly, subnodes are established under the tree node, and then the text reflecting each dimension is set as the reference point by line-byline coding, and then its hierarchical classification is programmed into the child node and the tree node, and finally the coding structure of the tree node-child node-reference point is formed.Finally, when the text content can be compiled into multiple child nodes, the method of semantic judgment is used to determine its true meaning in combination with the context and then compiled into the corresponding node (Pg7, Ln251-270).
[Comment 4] To ensure the reliability of the results, two researchers jointly encode a policy text, the percentage was greater than 70%, it was considered to have high confidence.Is the reliability of this method too low?Maybe need to supplement the explanation of the reliability of this method.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We've added a description of the consistency ratio.According to the practice of humanities and social sciences, a consistency coefficient of 0.0~0.20 indicates extremely low consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.21~0.40indicates general consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.41~0.60indicates medium consistency, a consistency coefficient of 0.61~0.80indicates a high degree of consistency, and a consistency coefficient of 0.81~1 indicates almost complete consistency.The formulation in the text has been revised to make it more reliable (Pg8, Ln279-283).
[Comment 5] The discussion is not closely related to the quantitative analysis of the previous 163 policy texts.The discussion between "The Homogenization of Policy Tools Based on the Criterion of Instrumental Rationality" and "The Trend Towards Diversification of Policy Tools Guided by Value Rationality "cannot reflect the conclusions drawn from the policy texts well.
The analysis content of the policy text is not closely related to the discussion.It is recommended to combine the discussion in the future with the analysis content of the previous policy text.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments to us.We have restructured the discussion section to better align with the policy text encoding data described earlier.The description is as follows.First, the current status of simplification of policy tools is based on the current results of text encoding.From the coding results, the proportion of command-type policy tools far exceeds the sum of other tools, and the current policy tools are mainly imperative.Second, the trend of diversification of policy instruments is derived through the analysis of the time dimension.Although the current command-type policy tools are the mainstay, the proportion of other policy tools has increased, so it shows a diversified development trend.Specific changes can be found in a marked copy of the manuscript.In addition, we have added some notes to the conclusion section to explore how the current findings differ from previous ones.
The first is to shift the analysis of policy texts from qualitative to quantitative analysis to make them more persuasive.The second is to expand the field of analysis of policy tools, which in the past focused more on the tools themselves, while research introduced tools into community governance.Finally, the construction of the three-dimensional model is not only analyzed from the policy tool itself but also combined with the time dimension and spatial dimension to make the research more explanatory (Pg10, Ln605-621).